110 VOLCANOES; EAETH QUAKES. 



has been remarked for many years, while the 

 southern end of the peninsula seems to have been 

 going down. Sinkings, and even alternate sink- 

 ings and risings, of the same tract of country have 

 likewise been often observed; for instance, on 

 many parts of the Italian coast, especially in 

 Calabria. However, upraisings of the land seem 

 generally to occur most frequently.*" If we connect 

 with these and similar facts, the existence of lofty 

 and vast mountain-tracts, which, according to the 

 judgments of geologists, can only have been formed 

 by settlements from water, it will seem to be cer- 

 tain, that a far greater portion of the earth must 

 once have been covered with water, than is so now ; 

 and that our present continents must have been 

 gradually raised out of the sea, in part by these 

 settlementsf from its waters, in part by matter 

 brought down by floods, and in part especially 



* The earthquake mentioned in the Biblical history, by 

 which Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed, seems to 

 have caused a sinking in of a great part of the bed of the 

 Jordan, and of the country which now surrounds the 

 Dead Sea; for this lake now lies more than a thousand 

 feet below the level of the Mediterranean and of the 

 Red Sea, while geological researches make it very pro- 

 bable that the Jordan formerly ran into the Red Sea. 



-j- You will of course remember the wonderful agency of 

 the coral insects, by whose industrious work islands are 

 still being built up in the great ocean. 



